


the long and winding road

by skuls



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Season 9 AU, travel themed bs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:35:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skuls/pseuds/skuls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She’s spent years with one foot out and one foot inside the car. Now, it’s all in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. many times i've been alone and many times i've cried

**Author's Note:**

> this is part urge to write an on-the-run story part kid fic part s9 protest part i don't even know. the theme of this is travel, so i tried to include travel of some form in every part of this. i don't know anything about science. unlike the entire scully-mulder family i am not a science nerd, but a literature nerd. which is why i write. i was too lazy to sort out emily's anemia, so i left that out as well.
> 
> the title and chapter titles are taken from the beatles' "the long and winding road".
> 
> this officially goes au after christmas carol, but veers completely off the rails post providence, with some iwtb storyline, except only the parts that don’t make you wanna scream. because of the circumstances of this au, i had to cut some episodes completely (rip, bad blood) or change the circumstances to better fit (ex: kitsunegari, chinga, how the ghosts stole christmas, etc.) also this is somewhat dark. there is ptsd and references to mulder's funeral and emily's parents' murder and lowkey violence and a sequence where someone cuts their own arm (but to save someone else) in part 3 and a nightmare sequence that mentions blood in part 7 and general angsty shit. sorry for this mess.
> 
> (because it really is a mess bye)

_“The long and winding road that leads to your door_

_Will never disappear_

_I've seen that road before_

_It always leads me here_

_Leads me to your door_ ” - The Long and Winding Road, The Beatles

 

**one: many times i've been alone and many times i've cried**

_2002_

**i.**

She sits precariously on the edge of the bed, flipping through a file Reyes had shoved at her before they’d left in the middle of the night. _Telekinesis._ Emily is sprawled out on the other bed beside William’s child seat, reading to him. She’d taken a stack of Mulder’s books when they’d left the house, and while Scully doubts either of them need to know about Bigfoot sightings, she sees no harm in it. It’s another connection.

The phone rings, and she freezes. Her daughter stares up at her with wide eyes. “Mom?” she asks.

Scully grabs the receiver and speaks into it without thinking. “Mulder?”

The voice on the other end is tight. “No, it’s Skinner.”

She closes her eyes. She shouldn’t have answered it like that. If it hadn’t been Mulder, it would be a dead giveaway to their location. “What is it?”

Emily mouths _Mulder?_  to her questioningly. She shakes her head tightly.

“As far as the media is concerned, the three of you are declared missing, assumed dead. Your mother is aware of the truth. I promised her you would contact her when it was safe.”

She winces. That had been the worst part of faking their deaths, leaving her mother. “Tell my mom I’ll send her an email.”

“And what about Mulder? I guess you haven’t talked to him.”

“I sent him an email, too, from a disclosed address,” she explains. “It’s coded, but he should be able to decipher it. It outlines our plan of escape. I’ve sent him an encrypted email with contact information every time we’ve settled down. I… I thought that it might’ve finally worked.”

“I’m sorry,” Skinner says on the other end. Miles away in DC, she knows that he is working with Doggett and Reyes to coordinate their escape. She owes them tremendously. She owes a lot of people, technically, favors she will probably never be able to repay.

“How are the kids?” he asks after a minute. Courteous of him, or maybe he actually cares.

“They’re fine,” Scully says, watching. Emily rocks the child seat back and forth, humming to William. She is very good with him. She will make a good big sister. “Thank you for checking in, sir.”

***

It hadn’t been easy to let him go, to suggest it, encourage it, but she’d forced herself. _Remember what he looks like not breathing,_ she’d told herself, curling her nails into her palm. _Remember. Remember. It’s not going to happen again. You can't let it._

He’d slouched in the doorway before he left, suitcases already packed in the car, eyes tired and pleading. “You know I don’t want to leave you, right?” he’d said, thumb tracing her jawline.

“I know,” she said softly. “You have to. You have to.”

She had wanted to grab on and pull him back into the apartment ( _his_ apartment, it was still impossible to think of it as theirs), tell him to keep an eye on the kids while she figured out dinner, stay up late watching a bad sci-fi movie and fall asleep on the couch, fight over who would go and get William when he cried in the night. That’s what they’d wanted, after all, when they agreed to do the IVF. She wanted to follow him. She moved his hand away from her face.

Emily would’ve cried, and clung to him, and begged him not to go. “Maybe I should wait until she gets up,” he said. He’d just showered, hair still dripping, and it was still early morning.

“No,” she said. If Emily got up, he would never leave. “She won’t understand. It’s better if I just explain it to her.”

“Tell her I love her,” he’d said, and then he’d said, “Wait, no, don’t tell her that.” He was still afraid of overstepping even after all this time.

“I’ll tell her,” she said. “William, too.” She wished he’d say it to her.

_Hey, Scully? I love you._

She should’ve said it to him, told him she loved him (because she did, of course she did), kissed him, hugged him goodbye, something.

“Bye, Scully,” he’d said with a small smile.

She put her hand on the door to close it after him. “Bye,” she replied.

***

Emily asks to go outside, and Scully agrees. The window in their motel room is wide, and she can see her perfectly. “But stay on the front lawn,” she reminds her. “And remember, you need to be careful.”

They’ve been telling Emily to be careful ever since an incident in kindergarten where she’d cut her finger with the safety scissors and bled green blood onto the yellow plastic table. The three other kids at the table, as well as the teacher, had gotten sick, and Scully had immediately switched her to homeschooling. Ever since then, they’d tried to avoid wounds that broke the skin. The only person who could get near it, for some reason, was Mulder, after his brain surgery experience.

She stands at the window, watching and cradling William. He lets out a soft sound as he drifts off to sleep. She holds him closer, and thinks of his father.

***

They’d left after William had been taken by the cult. She had decided on the drive home that it was too dangerous - for all four of them - to stay in an easily accessible area. So she’d worked her connections to make it possible. The Lone Gunmen had helped them fake their deaths, and Skinner had gotten them an FBI safe house in Massachusetts. They were traveling there, but Scully had been taking it slow. She couldn’t do many long hours in the car with the disadvantage of having a still fairly young baby and an eight year old girl, and her being the only driver. She was also hoping to find Mulder on their way. She couldn’t stand the idea of being stuck in a house waiting for news again. She’s spent years with one foot out and one foot inside the car. Now, it’s all in. It was inevitable, she supposes, all things considered.

Her biggest worry was that Mulder would think the emails were traps. The problem was that they were both trying to be covert about it. She couldn’t risk going any more public with her attempts to contact him, or risk putting him in danger. And technically, she was supposed to be dead.

***

She’s been a quote unquote “single parent”, technically, for years now. She’d adopted Emily as a singular unit. But she’s never really been alone. Even before they’d moved in with Mulder, he’d still been around plenty. She’d had her mother at a moment’s drive away, and she’d had the Gunmen as a last resort. Later, Reyes had offered to babysit frequently, declaring that she liked kids. Now she really is alone.

They eat dinner at an Applebee’s, something they would never do normally. Scully almost feels like she is bribing the kids, rewarding them for coming along on this trip from Hell. It’s strange to be sitting in a restaurant booth without Mulder.

She flees out of fear as soon as a man in a suit enters the restaurant. Leaving a couple of wrinkled twenties on the table without waiting for the check, she hurries them out to the car, strapping William quickly into his car seat and checking Emily’s seatbelt before tearing the hell out of that parking lot. She checks out and shoves their lightly packed suitcases into the trunk before lighting out down the road again. What with everything that has happened, she isn’t willing to risk anything.

  


**ii.**

Maggie opens the door tentatively at first, and then shoves it quickly when she sees who it is. She pulls Scully and William into a tight hug.

“Mom,” Scully mutters, hugging her back quickly. “Can we go inside? I…”

Maggie lets go and steps back so they can enter the house. She hugs Emily as Scully quickly closes the door behind them. “I parked in the garage,” she says. “I guess you heard that. I remembered the code. I didn't want anyone to know we're here…”

Maggie doesn't answer as she smooths Emily's hair and blinks back tears. “Hi, Grandma,” Emily says sleepily.

“Hi, sweetheart,” she mutters.

Emily yawns loudly as Maggie moves to take William. Scully lets her bonelessly. She has no authority in this situation. She has caused her mother enough pain.

“Are you tired?” Maggie asks. When Emily nods in response, she takes them into the back room to put them down. Scully circles the first floor, systematically closing all the curtains. She can't risk anyone knowing that they are here. That would mean that everything is a waste.

Her mother enters, giving her a weary look. “We need to talk.”

“Mom, I'm sorry. I just…”

“Your brothers are devastated.”

Her head snaps up. “Really? Charlie commented?”

“You're his sister, Dana. Of course he cares.”

“He didn't show up for Melissa's funeral.”

“That isn't the point here! You found it necessary to fake the deaths of you and your children, and disappear without telling anyone you were going.”

Scully sighs. This is the conversation she has been dreading. “I made sure you knew, Mom. I'm so sorry. You can tell Bill and Charlie, but they'll need to keep it quiet.”

“Why is this even necessary, Dana?” She is crying softly. “Why leave everything behind?”

“For William and Emily,” Scully says. “And Mulder. To keep them safe. This is the only way.”

Silence. She steps forward and lays a hand on Maggie's shoulder. “I don't want what happened last month to ever happen again, Mom. This is my way of ensuring it.”

Maggie nods without looking at her. Scully senses that she doesn't understand. “Is it safe for you to be here?”

“As long as we keep it quiet. We can stay for a few days. We're heading to a safe house. I'm sure you can visit us there,” she says. She'd come back so they could have a proper goodbye, but she also came back in hopes of locating Mulder. They cannot hide in hotels forever, and she refuses to go without him.

Her mother pulls her into another hug, and Scully sags into the embrace fully. For a second, she feels like a small child again.

***

Reyes arrives the next morning. Maggie bluntly refuses to let her in until Scully steps up to the door herself. “Thanks for coming,” she says. “Come in.”

Maggie shoots her daughter a look before going to join Emily and William in their onesided game of Monopoly. Scully remembers Emily playing Monopoly in the hospital waiting room with Skinner while she waited for the okay to go see Mulder. A couple of nurses had commented scathingly until they'd found out she was the daughter of the dead/alive man.

“I'd ask why you're here,” Reyes says, “but I do understand. And the good news is, it's working. The agents put in charge of locating you believe that there's no way you could've survived that wreck.”

“I still don't know how you did it, but I hope the blood samples helped,” Scully says. Maggie's head jerks a little when she hears that, but she doesn't comment. Scully grimaces a little, too - she'd hated taking blood, even if it was only a little.

“They did. As far as the world is concerned, the three of you are dead now.”

Sensing her mother's discomfort, Scully pulls Reyes into a side room. “Have you heard from Mulder?” she whispers.

“No, although Skinner told me about the phone call,” Reyes says. “I just hope he understands your email.”

Scully hopes so, too. They have been ghosts for three weeks now, though, and they haven't heard from him. “And you'll keep me posted?”

“Of course, Dana.” Reyes hugs her. “Be careful,” she says, warning in her voice.

***

They rattle around Maggie's house for three days. Scully watches the news consistently, a learned habit from when Mulder had been abducted, to see if he would pop up. Emily plays almost constantly with William. She tries to teach him Uno, although they both know he can't learn it. William constantly makes his favorite noise, an “eee” sound that Emily insists is him trying to say her name. Maggie hovers. Scully feels sorry for her mother. She tries to imagine an older version of Emily faking her death as well as her children’s and driving off into the sunset. It isn't a life she would wish on anyone.

On the third day, the phone rings. Scully doesn't pay it much attention until she hears her mother say, “I'm sorry. Dana… she was in an accident, she…”

Another pause. Scully is already approaching. Maggie presses the receiver against her cardigan to muffle her voice as she says, “Agent Doggett?” in a questioning voice.

Scully takes the phone. “Hello?”

“Agent Scully, have you talked to Mulder?”

She freezes, fingers numbing around the receiver. “No, why?”

“We think we may be able to locate him. There’s a government lab near here that may have him in their records, but Monica and I have been denied access.”

“I can get in,” Scully says immediately. “I’ll call the Gunmen to help.”

Maggie is staring at her incredulously. She’d probably have reacted similarly herself a couple of years ago, at the idea of breaking into a government building, but now she is desperate. Besides that, Mulder had done it for her.

“Are you sure, Dana?” Doggett asks on the other end. He’s always been concerned for her safety. He was the one most against the fake deaths, but he hadn’t had much of a hand in it. He was still recovering from the car accident at the time.

“I’m sure. I’m dead now, remember? I have nothing to lose.”

  
  


**iii.**

The van parks outside the lab, and the three in the front look back at Scully. She pulls her gun out of it's holster, and clutches the sedative in her free hand. “Your earpiece in?” Langly asks her.

She nods. “Be ready to light out of here. This won’t exactly be a clean escape.”

Byers climbs out of the front seat, and Scully follows, hoisting herself up and over the back of the seat. She runs breathlessly to the edge of the building and through the door. Byers has picked the lock at a record rate.

She moves down multiple halls, checking the windows of labs, afraid she’ll find a scene of half-remembered nightmares from Mulder’s abduction or her own. She finds nothing.

A shout echoes from down the hall, a surprised shout, and Scully instantly raises her gun. What follows is a familiar voice. Mulder’s voice. “You son of a bitch!”

She runs down the hallway at break neck speed, taking in Mulder’s rapid-fire words. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill them?”

_Oh, God._

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Dana Scully and her two children were killed in a multi-car collision a few weeks ago.” This tone is all too familiar. It’s the same tone he had in the warehouse, after Linda Bowman, when Scully had barged in last minute to find her telling Mulder she was dead. _You killed her! She has a daughter and you killed her!_  Scully shudders, and covers the last few feet in a matter of seconds, pulling the sedative out. She enters a computer room, where Mulder is pointing a gun at the lone worker. He doesn’t see her yet. “Tell me you bastards weren’t involved!” he shouts, half sobbing. “Tell me you didn’t kill them!”

Scully moves quickly, coming up behind the man and jabbing the sedative into his shoulder. He slumps forward in his seat. She checks his pulse quickly, and then looks back up at Mulder. He’s frozen in place, eyes wide with surprise, gun half-lowered. He’s looking at her without really seeing her.

“Mulder,” she says, words bubbling up in her throat. It has still been such a long time since she’s seen him. “Mulder, it’s me. I’m so sorry.”

He reaches out for her, fingers brushing her cheek. “You’re not dead?” he whispers. “You’re okay?”

“Yes,” she says. She feels like crying. “I tried to…”

He pulls her into a tight hug. She immediately reciprocates, holding him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. He is shaking. “I’m so sorry, Mulder,” she whispers again.

“The kids?” he asks. “The kids are okay?”

Scully smiles. “Yes, they’re all right. I promise I’ll explain everything, but we need to get out of here, okay? I have the Gunmen outside in a van.”

She pulls away, but only slightly. He grabs her hand immediately. She moves back the way she came, moving through the hallways steadily, leading Mulder along. “Frohike, get ready,” she says into her mouthpiece.

“Did you get the information?”

“Better. I got Mulder.”

They exit the building quickly, Byers shoving the door and relocking it behind them. Scully pulls Mulder into the back of the van, closing the door behind them. She turns, and he kisses her desperately as the van moves away. She relaxes, gun clattering to the dingy floor.

“Scully,” he gasps. “I thought I would never see you again.”

She wipes her eyes quickly, and offers up another apology. “I tried to let you know, I swear,” she says. “I sent you emails in code…”

Mulder grimaces. “I haven’t had access to a computer in months.”

“Oh,” she says, shoulders slumping with relief. “Oh.”

Mulder tips her chin upwards. Their eyes meet. “What happened?”

“William was taken,” she says. He tenses, and she immediately adds, “About a month ago. He’s fine. But the abduction was orchestrated by a cult who wanted you dead. I thought you were dead, for a while there. And… I’ve missed you, Mulder. The kids have missed you. I thought it would be safer for all of us if we could disappear.”

“So you faked your deaths?”

“Yes.” Scully moves closer. “Skinner has an FBI safe house in Massachusetts. We’d started to travel there, but I wanted to wait. I wanted to find you. I broke into the lab because I thought they’d have your whereabouts.”

Mulder looks down at her. He blinks back tears. She pulls him into a hug, and whispers her apology repeatedly.

  


**iv.**

Mulder supposes that there really is no winner in the cycle of believing someone you love is dead. Scully had buried him, sat on the idea that she could never see him again for months while their child grew inside of her. But then again, she’d had Emily, and the upcoming of William. Him, he’d thought he’d lost the last members of his family.

Maggie meets them in a parking lot. Mulder’s heart skips a few beats when he sees them, Emily wearing what must be an old coat of a younger Scully zipped up to her chin, William cradled in Maggie’s arms. When Emily sees him, she shouts “Mulder!”, and runs in his direction. He grabs her up in a hug. Maggie hands him William so that, somehow, he is holding both of them up.

“I missed you,” Emily says, shoes digging into his ribs.

“I missed you too,” he mutters. William is babbling, little hands extended upwards. Emily slides her right arm underneath him to help support him.

Scully is smiling slightly. She touches Mulder on the arm. “I hate to break this up, but we’d better be going.”

“Right,” Mulder says. He lowers Emily to the ground. She immediately runs to give Maggie a goodbye hug. Scully is next, and then Mulder holds out William, not wanting to let go of him, but wanting Maggie to get a chance to say goodbye. She surprises him by hugging them both.

“Take care of them, Fox,” she says. Her tone is almost stern.

“I will,” he promises.

“Bye, Mom,” Scully says, on the verge of tears. “We’ll call you.”

“I’ll come and visit when I can,” she promises. “You all need to go. I know it’s dangerous.”

They say a quick farewell to the Gunmen before entering the van. Byers had suggested they take it, and Frohike and Langly had agreed. It would look less suspicious if they switched cars.

Mulder climbs into the back of the van with the kids to get them settled. Scully drives for almost twenty straight minutes before she looks back to see them asleep across the seat, Mulder cradling William with Emily’s head resting just below his arm.

***

“Did you see anything cool?” Emily asks, swinging her legs.

“Not really.” Mulder is trying to remember how to give William a bottle. “New Mexico is boring.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Mulder shifts the bottle a little, and William starts sucking up the milk. “What about you? What did you do?”

“I helped Mom with William,” she says. “And I worked through a whole homeschool book.”

“Really?” he asks, impressed.

“Yeah. It was really boring without you around.”

“So that makes you a… third grader?”

“ _Fourth_ grader,” Emily corrects him. “Remember? I already did the other ones.”

“Oh, yeah.” He remembers her working on the floor of the office, just out of sight in case someone abruptly walked in, on days Maggie couldn’t babysit. She’d only worked through kindergarten in the time he could remember, but apparently, she’d had a lot of working time in his many absences.

“You’re not gonna leave again, are you?” She rests her head against his arm.

“No,” Mulder says, sure of himself for once. “Never again. I promise.”

“Good.”

William finishes the bottle, and Mulder hands the bottle off to Emily as he shifts his son to his shoulder to burp him. He pats his back gently until a small one escapes. Satisfied, he shifts his son back into the crook of his arm.

Emily points. “Look, he’s saying your name!”

Mulder looks. William is making soft sounds, but none of any particular dialect. “He’s just making noise, sweetie,” he explains. “Although I’m sure he’ll be talking sooner or later.”

“No,” she insists firmly, in a very Scully tone. “He’s trying to say your name. He tries to say mine all the time. He never tries to say Mom’s, though. It’s weird.”

Mulder studies William. He supposes that his grunts could somewhat be mistaken for as the first syllable as “Mulder”. But then again, he’d always expected William to call him “Dad”. Emily calls him Mulder, though. Maybe it’s just natural that William would, too.

“Very smart of him,” he says approvingly. “You want to hold him?”

“Sure.” Emily takes William like she has been doing it for years. Mulder feels some small pang of jealousy that a seven-year-old, sister or not, has more experience holding his son than he does.

***

William is able to take a few tentative steps around the room if either Scully or Mulder are holding his hands. He doesn’t do anything more than make normal baby noises, but Emily had a person or object to attribute for every sound. They keep moving, but they stop a lot, too. Emily hasn’t traveled much, and it’s hard for the kids to be in the car that long. Scully deducts that it might be safer for them to lay low for periods, anyways, so they barely go out. It’s a nice contrast from the long days Mulder spent searching in New Mexico.

In Pennsylvania, Mulder notices that Emily is holding her book ( _Ten Popular Urban Legends in America_ ) too close to her face as she reads in the lamplight. He leans close to Scully as she exits the bathroom with William and whispers, “Hey, Scully, look.”

She looks, bites her lower lips, and calls out, “Emily?”

Emily lowers the book to look at them.

“Are you having trouble seeing, sweetie?”

She nods sheepishly. “When I don’t hold the book close, I can’t read it.”

Scully turns to face him. “Her eyes will get worse if we don’t take her to the eye doctor.”

Mulder shrugs. “Well, that’s what the fake IDs from the Gunmen are for.”

Scully laughs. “Mulder, I don’t think you need an ID to go to an eye doctor.”

“Still. Do you want to take her or should I?”

“I want Mulder to take me,” Emily pipes up from behind.

Scully grins. “Good idea. It’s been a while, you two should spend some time together.”

“I just want him to take me because I know you’ll ask a million questions about medical stuff no one cares about, Mom.”

Mulder laughs. “She has a point, Scully.”

***

He isn’t sure about Scully’s rules about front seat sitting, but he lets Emily sit in the front anyway. “So what’s our story?” he asks as he turns into the parking lot of the building.

Emily wrinkles her nose. “We need a story?”

“In case anyone asks.”

“We’re getting glasses.”

Mulder rolls his eyes. Like mother, like daughter. “Okay, fine. So someone asks, ‘where’s your mother’? Are we gonna tell them ‘she’s at a hotel hiding out’?”

Emily considers this, propping her foot up on the dashboard. “No, we’ll say she’s home sick. Simple.”

“Okay,” Mulder says.”Okay, well, you need to remember something.”

“Uh huh?”

“Remember we’re pretending to be someone else.” They’d shown her the IDs. Emily and William’s names stayed the same, but their names had changed, and their covert last name was Jones now. It's common enough. “And if anyone asks, our last name is Jones.”

“Okay,” she says, throwing open the car door. Mulder takes this as a cue and exits the car to follow her into the building.

Things go smoothly as they check her in and sit down to wait. All until Emily slips and calls him Mulder. A woman sitting near them squints through the smudgy glasses she is probably here for, and asks her, “Why do you call your daddy that, honey?”

Mulder’s eyes widen, and he is trying to think of an answer - he’s thinking offering the explanation that he is her stepfather - when Emily jumps in smoothly. “It’s a nickname from a book we both like,” she says.

“Oh.” The woman blinks and shifts in her seat. “What book is that?”

“You wouldn’t know it.”

They call for the woman at this point, and Mulder takes the opportunity to tell the receptionist that they will be back in a minute before taking Emily out into the hall. “Nice save back there,” he says. “Where did you learn to lie like that?”

Emily shrugs. “It wasn’t hard.”

“Well,” he says. “It worked very well for the situation, but you know you should only lie to certain people, right? You shouldn’t lie to your mom, or your brother, or your grandmother. Or me. Or any adult you know, unless you feel uncomfortable. Only lie in situations like that. When you think you have to.”

Her head bobs up and down. “Yeah, I know.”

He pokes her in the arm. “And don’t lie to the doctor when he asks if you can see.”

Emily giggles. “Okay. And the doctor might be a she, you know. Like Mom.”

The doctor was indeed a she, and the examination went quickly. She writes out a perscription, and they fix up the frames that Emily picked out. She puts them on and studies herself definitively in the mirror.

“You look very cute,” the doctor tells her kindly.

“You look like your mother,” Mulder tells her. Her hair had darkened in recent years so that it was almost the same shade of red as Scully’s. With the glasses on and her hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail, she looks like a smaller version of the Scully that Mulder remembered from their early investigating days.

Emily gives him a classic Scully look, and the resemblance is creepy. “Mom told me I look like Aunt Melissa,” she informs him.

“You do,” he admits, although he’d only ever met Melissa a few times. He takes the paperwork offered by the doctor, and they leave with a new pair of wire rimmed glasses, and a plastic bag with a complimentary case and cleaning cloth.

  
**v.**

“Are you going to tell me about it?” Scully asks him.

He tightens his arms around her protectively. “About New Mexico?” She nods, hair brushing the underside of his chin. He kisses the top of her head. “Nothing to tell, really. I didn’t find anything definitive.”

She leans into him. “I missed you. I should’ve come with you from day one. Packed up the kids and left.”

“You all would’ve hated New Mexico,” he says. “Besides, William was too young to travel.”

“I know, but…” She shudders. “The cult that took William… a man made a deal with me. He told me he’d give me William if I brought him your… head.”

“My God, Scully.” Mulder can’t even imagine being in that position. He brushes her cheek with his fingertips. “I spent a good three weeks thinking you were dead,” he says. “I found out in this diner, days after… it helped that you were a federal agent, and you had two children with you, and it was a multi-car crash where the car went off the bridge and the hitter kept going. The report said there’d been no success in locating the bodies.” He sucks in a sharp breath. “ _Bodies_ , Scully. I thought… I tried to call you immediately, but I got no answer. So I got to the airport as fast as I could, and bought a plane ticket home. But when I got to your apartment, you weren’t there.”

Her voice is soft as she asks him, “What did you do?”

“I was… crazed with grief, Scully. I think I slept on and off for most of those weeks. And then… I don’t remember what drove me to do it, but I did it. I broke into the FBI building and stole your file.”

“They didn’t tell me that,” she breathes. “Maybe they didn’t know… I would’ve known it was you. I was waiting for you.”

“I read the file over and over, Scully. And by the end of it, I knew it wasn’t an accident.”

“So you went to the lab.”

He kisses the back of her hand, her hair, her forehead. “I don’t blame you, Scully, because I know why you did it, and I know you tried to let me know. But… in those three weeks, I felt like they’d taken away everything I had left. I thought I’d lost this. I don’t want to lose this.”

They look over at the kids asleep on the bed, Emily’s arm wrapped protectively around William’s small form. “You’re not going to,” Scully assures him. “Never.”

***

She’d told him he was a father a few minutes after he’d woken up. Her head on his chest, she’d whispered it into his shoulder. “I never got the chance to tell you, but… we’re going to have a baby,” she whispered.

He’d lifted his head slightly in surprise. “Scully?” he’d whispered.

She looked up at him, eyes spilling over. “I found out just after you were taken,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to tell you.”

“How… how is that possible?”

“I don’t know. But it’s real, and it’s happening.” She carefully slipped her fingers between his and lifted his hand to press against her extended abdomen. Something had moved under his fingers, and he gasped a little. It was a strange feeling.

“That’s… that’s great, Scully,” he’d said. A smile slipped out despite himself. He was tired, but here was his child.

She smiled shakily. “I know. I know.”

“How’s Emily?” he’d asked, suddenly remembering. “She’s… she’s a lot bigger now, isn’t she?” He couldn’t help but be jealous. Clearly, he’d missed a good amount of time, because here was Scully, clearly pregnant and showing.

She laughed a little. “She’s fine,” she said. “She’s worried about you… I don’t think she understands what’s been going on, but she’s missed you.”

He would say he missed her, he’d missed both of them, if he could remember any of it. “What _has_ been going on?” he asked.

She had flinched a little. “Oh, Mulder,” she’d said, and he’d known it must’ve been bad.

The car rushes along the road, and his family is asleep in it, Scully with her head against the window, Emily with her head against William’s car seat. He drives carefully, as if the entire car will fall apart. He will not lose what he has gained.

***

The house is in the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhere that really gives you a sense of desolation. The van barely makes it up the hill to the house. Emily presses her nose against the window. “Is this home?” she asks.

Mulder parks at the end of the driveway. Scully turns to face them in the backseat. “Yes,” she tells them. “It’s home.”


	2. the wild and windy night that the rain washed away has left a pool of tears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's where the ptsd kinda comes into play

**two: the wild and windy night that the rain washed away has left a pool of tears**

_ 2003 _

**i.**

The doorbell rings, and for a second, Scully isn’t sure what it is. They never get visitors out here. 

Emily opens the door. “Hi, Grandma,” she says, and Scully steps out into the entranceway to smile at her mother. Maggie is standing awkwardly in the doorway. She offers a smile to the two of them.

“Come in.” Emily steps aside so she can enter. She is wearing a sweatshirt that Mulder bought for her in town, one with a giant cartoon turkey. (Scully had disapproved in favor of an authentic turkey, but she can’t shake down Mulder’s holiday goofiness. He is like a little kid on a sugar rush around Halloween.)

Maggie hugs Emily first, and then Scully. “It’s so nice to see you again,” she says.

Scully kisses her mother’s cheek. “I’ve missed you, Mom. How’ve you been?”

Before she can offer up any answer, William wanders in. He heads immediately for Emily, whispering, “Who’s that?” as he eyes Maggie suspiciously. Scully pretends not to see her mother wince.

“Silly,” Emily chides. “That’s Grandma, remember? She was here over the summer!”

“My goodness, William, look how big you’re getting!” she says, going to scoop him up.

William hugs her uncertainly. “Hi,” he says, looking over his shoulder at Scully. She nods in what she hopes is a reassuring way. She hates having to reassure William about his own grandmother, but the only people William interacts with is the few people he sees when Mulder takes them into town, the Gunmen, and Reyes or Skinner, on the few occasions they drive up to visit. He is not used to unfamiliar people.

Maggie lets him down, and turns to Scully uncertainly. Emily takes his hand and suggests to him that they go and find Mulder. As they leave the room, Maggie clears her throat uncomfortably. “They want me to give you a funeral.”

Scully gapes a little. She forgets, sometimes, that they are dead. “A funeral?”

“Yes,” she says. “I never told Bill and Charlie that you were… alive. And Bill called me the other day, and he said that I should give you all a funeral. He said that I needed closure, that it was very unlikely after over a year that anything new would turn up.”

“Mom…” Scully touches her on the shoulder. 

“Is it safe now?” she asks. “No one has found you here, you have Fox, can’t you just come back?”

From the back rooms, there is a bump, a wail, and a shattering sound. “Mom, it happened again!” Emily calls.

Scully hurries into the back room with Maggie close at her heels. Emily is on the floor, consoling William as he cries, and a vase that once sat on the mantle lies shattered on the floor. “Come on, Will, we talked about this,” Emily tells him.

Maggie looks up at the bare spot, and down at the child who reaches about to Emily's knee. “William couldn't have knocked that down!” she protests.

Scully scoops her son up, and runs a hand over his head. “You know, William,” she whispers. “Remember what we said about getting mad? Remember counting to ten?”

He sniffles and nods. Scully presses a kiss to the carpet burned knee. Maggie watches the scene with a sort of dumbfoundedness. She has probably never given a two-year-old lectures about anger management.

“Whoa - what’s going on?” Mulder comes into the room, surveying the scene. “Hi, Maggie,” he says sheepishly.

“William fell down,” Emily supplies, waving a hand at the broken vase.

“So I see.” He takes William from Scully. “Emily, would you mind sweeping this up? I’m gonna get him a Band-Aid. We’ll give these two some space to catch up.”

“Thanks,” Scully says gratefully. She herds her mother out of the room. “That’s why, Mom,” she says in a low voice. “That’s why we can’t come back.”

“I don’t understand, Dana. William could not have knocked that vase over.”

“But he did.” Scully turns to look her mother in the eye. “Do you remember when the cult came for William?”

“Yes, of course I do.”

“Well, when we found him, his crying had caused the ship to come up and kill them all. He was the only survivor.”

She presses a hand to her mouth. “My goodness, Dana…” 

“I don’t blame him for that,” she says quickly. “He couldn’t have known what he was doing, and besides that, he wasn’t safe there. But the thing is, when he gets mad, things like… that happen. Worse, even. Once he got mad when Emily was reading and wouldn’t play with him, and he made her fall and scrape her elbow.” She bites her lip. “And you’ve seen what happens when Emily bleeds.” 

Maggie is flustered by all of this, and Scully honestly doesn’t blame her. Most people who say they have problems with their kids don’t mean “my son is telepathic and my daughter, who is probably part alien, bleeds green blood”. “I know it’s terrible,” she says. “And those aren’t the only reasons we’re staying away, and I hated to take them away from their home and their grandmother, but honestly, Mom? I thought it might be a choice between that and their father.”

Maggie nods. “I understand,” she says. “I understand.”

  
  


**ii.**

A few weeks later, Scully gets a pamphlet in the mail.  _ In Memory of Dana, Emily, and William Scully, December 17, 2003. Thank You For Coming. _ She isn’t sure if it is a cruel joke, or her mother’s attempt at diplomacy. Or more likely, her mother is annoyed that she had to attend a funeral for her daughter and grandchildren when they are alive and well in Massachusetts.

Mulder puts a Christmas tree up in the living room that he claims he chopped down, but Scully knows he bought it from the farm three miles up the road. She watches him and William decorate the tree from the doorway. Christmas is a conglomeration of good and bad memories, for her. When her father died. When she found out she had a daughter. 

She sometimes forgets that Emily is very traumatized for a little girl. She comes downstairs for a cup of water that night, and finds her sitting under the table, knees clutched to her chest. Scully immediately goes down on her knees beside her. “Sweetie, what it is?”

Emily leans her forehead against her knees. She is glasses-less, her sock feet sliding on the tile. “The tree,” she mutters. 

“Oh.” This is right around the time that her first parents died. Scully lays a cold hand tentatively on her shoulder. She isn’t sure what to say in comfort. “Do you want us to take it down?”

She shakes her head.

Scully shifts so that she is sitting on the floor, and pulls her daughter into her lap. She smooths her hair in what she hopes is a comforting way.

“The snow,” Emily says.

Scully looks over at the kitchen window. Snow is falling lightly outside. “The snow? Why does the snow upset you?”

“Mulder.”

Oh. The funeral. Scully rocks her daughter back and forth. She doesn’t know what to say. Her daughter has lived through the death of three parents, and that’s more than most people can say.

Mulder finds the two of them on the floor, and he carries a half-asleep Emily back to her room. Scully meets him outside in the hall. “We’ve all had a funeral,” she whispers.

He takes her cold hands in his. “What?” he whispers, confused.

Scully pulls the pamphlet out of her pocket. For some reason, she’d kept it there. 

  
  


**iii.**

In December of 1998, Mulder had considered asking Scully to go to a haunted house with him on Christmas Eve. But she’d had a daughter, and he knew she wouldn’t want to go, so he’d been at home that night, resigned to his loneliness, when there’d been a knock at the door. It had been Scully and Emily. Scully hadn’t even bothered addressing him. She’d spoken directly to Emily, saying, “Do you want to ask him what you asked me?”

Emily had looked up shyly, and said, “Do you want to come back with us for Christmas?”

He could hardly say no to that offer.

Scully had insisted on watching _ It’s A Wonderful Life _ , which Emily hadn’t liked, probably because it was black and white and long and the Christmas parts didn’t start until more than halfway through. She’d fallen asleep on the couch in too-big pajamas. They’d finished out the movie in silence, until the credits began to play. Mulder reached for the remote.

“I can relate to George Bailey,” she’d said. 

Mulder withdrew his hand, and turned to look at her. “Do you have a crazy uncle I don’t know about, Scully?”

She’d laughed as she absently combed through Emily’s hair with her fingers. “No, it’s not that,” she said. “It just reminds me of Antarctica.”

He shudders a little, remembering the stillness of her breath, the coldness of her skin. He’d promised her daughter that he would bring her home. “Why is that?”

“Because I was ready to leave. And then I thought about it. After the hallway, after you came for me.” Scully halfway smiled. “George Bailey didn’t realize what things would be like if he’d never been born. Just like how I’d never thought about what life would be like if I’d never met you.”

“You wouldn’t have been taken,” he said. “You wouldn’t have gotten sick.”

“That’s true,” she agreed. “But I wouldn’t have Emily, and I wouldn’t have you. How could I give up something like that?”

He shivered a little at this. This had been the first they’d discussed the hallway, or anything relating to the matter. He had wondered if she’d known that he meant what he’d said on his hospital bed. He’d regretted it, then. Some boundaries weren’t meant to be crossed, and then, it had seemed like that was the biggest one. The woman he loved held her daughter in her lap, and he sat across from them on Christmas Eve. Snow had fallen lightly.

“Hey, Scully,” he’d said. “Did I tell you about this house that is haunted only on Christmas Eve?”

She’d smiled. “It’s late, Mulder. I need to get Emily in bed. Tell me in the morning?”

“Oh,” he’d said. “Okay.” He reached for his car keys. She got there first, moving them to the mantle, and tossing him a blanket. 

Christmas had never been a holiday he’d enjoyed, before. There hadn’t been much point to it after Samantha. So he’d slogged through year after year alone, not really caring. Until a little girl wanted him to come for Christmas, and he’d fallen in like he’d been there the entire time. Scully admitted later that she’d been having trouble, since Christmas was the time when her first parents had died. “I think she does better when you’re around,” she’d said. “She likes you.”

So Mulder tries to fill that role now.

“Hey, Scully,” he says one day. Three days before Christmas. “Did I ever tell you the story of the haunted house?”

She raises an eyebrow at him over the book she is reading. “Haunted house?”

“Yeah, the one haunted by the spirits on Christmas Eve.”

“Really?” Emily says from the floor, where she is playing Candy Land with William. “I want to hear that.”

Mulder raises a eyebrow as if he hadn’t known she would want to hear it. She’s always hung onto every word of his stories, whether she believes them or not. “Really?”

“Yeah! Hey, Will, don’t you want to hear a story about ghosts?”

“Ghosts,” William confirms, sticking a red gingerbread playing piece in his mouth. Mulder pulls it away, and flicks his eyes up to Scully.

She shrugs, ends of her mouth turning up. “Go ahead.”

Emily flops with her back against the easy chair, pulling William into her lap. “Go ahead,” she repeats.

Mulder grins, and clears his throat dramatically. “Christmas, 1917. It was a time of dark, dark despair…”

  
**iv.**

“Are you okay?” he asks her as they mount the hill leading to the house, since he refuses to drive the car up a snowy hill.

Snow crunches under her boots, and she refuses to look at him. “I’m fine.”

Mulder sighs. He supposes he should expect this out of Scully’s daughter, but that honestly doesn’t make it any less infuriating. “I understand if you’re not, Emily. What you went through was terrible. I… I understand.”  _ Even though your mother didn’t kill herself, and mine did, but we both lost our parents to this mess.  _ “But if you’re upset, we want to help you.”

Emily sighs. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“I’d like to,” he says. “If you don’t mind.”

She bends over and scoops up some snow in her wool-covered palm. “I don’t even remember them.”

“Your parents?” 

She throws the snow down the hill. It hits without a sound. “I don’t remember much,” she says. “Except blood, I guess. I have nightmares sometimes.”

“Oh.” What else did he expect? But still. “Emily…”

She kicks the ground hard before he can touch her. “It’s not just that,” she says. “It’s the snow.”

He looks around at the sea of whiteness surrounding them. “Snow?” Surely there wasn’t snow in San Diego, when her parents had died. 

She nods. She bites her lip. “We buried you in the snow.”

Oh. He looks into her eyes, Scully’s eyes. She is on the verge of tears. “It was terrible. Mom was such a mess. I remember the night she found you. She just lay down on the couch and cried. Skinner had to tell me what happened.” She swipes under her eyes.

He’s always held back, but he senses he shouldn’t. He pulls her into a hug. “I’m not gonna go anywhere,” he tells her. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

  
  


**v.**

Things had been different for them for a long time come the new Millennium. He wasn’t sure when, exactly, things had shifted. Maybe when he spent a night whispering her name in his sleep on her couch the night after Linda Bowman, and shared cereal with Emily at her kitchen table. Maybe it was all the times she’d come running to save his life when he’d gotten in trouble on cases. Maybe it was when she informed him that he was Emily’s emergency contact at her pre-school, when they’d almost kissed in a hallway and he’d gone to Antarctica, when he’d told her he loved her. Maybe when he’d driven with her daughter to New York after she’d been shot on her first case back at the FBI. Maybe when he’d gotten the X-Files back and she’d come back with him, maybe after they’d taken their undercover case as a married couple, maybe after Emily informed him that he should marry Scully and he’d almost choked on his spoon. Maybe after his brain surgery had happened, and she’d gone to Africa for him despite her daughter, and he was the only one who could get near Emily’s blood. Somehow, they’d grown closer in that time, and it was natural for him to come home with her sometimes, or spend excessive time with her daughter. But the first time he’d kissed her had been in the first minutes of 2000. 

He’d hooked his good arm around her shoulder, and led her out of the hospital. She hadn’t said anything to him as he drove her home, and he hadn’t looked at her. He’d stood awkwardly in her kitchen as she thanked the Gunmen for babysitting. He had a zombie bullet he’d scooped off the floor before leaving Frank’s basement, and he wanted to leave it for Emily. She liked it when he brought her weird case souvenirs. He rolled it back and forth in his palm as Scully came over to him, eyeing him curiously.

“This is for Emily,” he’d said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Funny,” she said. “More proof of the world not ending.”

“Scully, people may be afraid of the unknown, but that doesn’t mean it’s dangerous,” he said. “Which is why the new year 2000 was not the end of the world.”

She’d risen up on her toes and kissed him this time, and he’d thought  _ finally finally finally _ as his fingers intertwined in her hair.

Now, they let Emily and William stay up until midnight. William makes it until 10:16 before he conks out on the floor. Emily drowsily watches from the easy chair as the TV broadcasts the celebration. 

“Do you think the world will ever end on midnight on the New Year?” he asks her. 

“Mulder, I think that’s highly implausible,” she says. “The apocalypse will likely be more gradual, when it comes.”

“Huh,” he says. “My money is on 2012. The Mayans probably knew what they were talking about.”

“You’re going to scare Emily,” she says. But she smiles up at him.

He holds her hand, and whispers, “Three, two, one,” along with the TV. And the world doesn’t end.


	3. let me know the way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: someone cuts themself to save someone else (not in a suicidal way) in this part, but it's not really discussed after the first two sections. also more lowkey violence/peril but that also ends after the first section

**three: let me know the way**

_ 2004 _

**i.**

One night, William’s face is flushed with fever, and Scully is trying to coax him to sleep when his small fingers latch onto her sleeve. “Mommy,” he says, voice husky. “Mommy, someone's here.”

“What?” She turns to face the door, figuring he means Emily or Mulder. 

There is a crash downstairs. And then a very distinct shout of pain. “Daddy,” William says, eyes wide.

Scully tears out of the room. She grabs her gun from the table in the hallway and sprints down the stairs. As she enters the living room, someone catches her across the forehead and the weapon slips from her fingers, hitting the carpeted floor silently. “Scully!” Mulder shouts, and she searches the room until she sees him, being held by a man who is shoving a gun into his ribs. He struggles in the man's grasp, asking her, “Are you okay?”

She nods and starts toward him, only to be stopped by a gun in the face. There is another man, holding her at gunpoint. “Let him go,” she says firmly, even though she has lost her weapon, and is bleeding right at her hairline. She tries to assess the situation.  _ Mulder can't move Emily Emily where's Emily?  _

“I don't think so,” the man says. The one holding Mulder presses it into his ribs until he lets out an involuntary gasp.

Scully flinches. “Let him  _ go, _ ” she repeats. Is the room shifting to her?

“Scully, no,” Mulder says warningly. She hears his voice echoing through her head, although she isn't sure if it's real or her head wound.  _ Let them take me, Scully, please. They'll hurt you. _

“Go get your kids,” the man says. “Go get your kids, and we'll let him go.”

Mulder's eyes widen. “Scully,  _ no _ ,” he says again with more force, struggling against his captor’s grip. 

She shakes her head involuntarily. 

The man holding Mulder cocks the gun. “I'll do it.”

“No,” she whispers. “No, please. Please don't hurt him. I'll…”

“Stop!”

Scully turns to look at the source. Emily stands in the doorway, arm raised. She has a kitchen knife pressed to her upper arm. She has had a recent growth spurt, and now is the size of her mother. Her expression is furious. 

“Emily…” Scully mutters in warning.

The distance between the gun and herself is closed, and the man presses the musket against her hair. “Don't do anything stupid, kid.”

“Let my parents go,” she says.

Scully wishes she'd talked to her daughter about this. She wants to tell Emily to run upstairs and get William and get out of here.

“Let them go,” she repeats. 

The man holding Mulder presses the gun harder against him. “We'll let them go,” he says easily. “We'll let them go if you hand us that knife.”

_ No Emily don’t leave it alone take it out of here… _

Emily takes a step closer, and draws the blade over the top of her arm. She thrusts the wound, green blood spilling over the gap in her skin, in the direction of the men. They immediately start coughing wildly. The one holding Mulder loosens his grip, and Mulder twists free, grabbing  the gun away. Scully sways. The carpet rushes up at her.

She fades in and out. She hears her daughter's frantic voice. “Mom? Mom, are you okay?”

Someone scoops her up. She thinks it's Mulder, and she lets her head loll against his shoulder limply. “It’ll be okay,” he says. “Will you run and grab William? We need to get out of here.”

_ Mulder,  _ she thinks.  _ Emily... _ She tries to ask if everyone is okay. She lets herself fall into the vacuum of darkness.

  
**ii.**

Mulder checks the chain lock on their hotel room three times before shoving the gun into the waistband of his jeans (he hasn’t had a holster in years) before going and checking on Scully. Her breathing is shallow. He brushes hair away from her swollen face.

Emily and William exit the bathroom, William’s hair damp from his bath. He immediately runs over to the bed, and clambers up beside Scully. “Mommy?” he asks, tucking his head under her arm. She remains in a state of unconsciousness. 

“Be careful, buddy,” Mulder says, placing a hand on his back. “She’s not feeling well. We need to let her rest.”

Emily collapses on the bed. “This is my fault,” she says, picking at the bandage he’d wrapped around her arm. It’s tinted with green. 

“No, it’s not,” Mulder insists. He would lecture her about endangering herself, but he needs to reassure her, and besides that, they wouldn’t have been able to escape if she hadn’t done that. “That was quick thinking. You saved us.”

Emily stares at her mother, lying limply on the bed. 

“She’ll be all right,” Mulder assures her. “She’ll be all right.”

***

Scully wakes up on a hotel bed with a headache and Mulder beside her. She turns her face into his arm.

“Scully!” His arm wraps around her shoulders. “How do you feel?”

“Okay.” Her voice is rough and gravelly. She clears her throat. “The kids? Are they…”

“They’re fine.” He kisses her hairline. “Emily’s worried. She thinks it’s her fault.”

“How much blood did she lose?”

“Not a lot. I bandaged it up. She’s fine.”

Scully forces herself to sit upwards, back flattening against the pile of pillows. They must have cleaned out the front desk’s extra pillow stock. “I need to look at it.”

The door swings open. As soon as William sees that she’s awake, he sprints over to the bed and tries to climb up. She helps him up and hugs him fiercely. “I’m okay,” she tells him.

Emily stands in the doorway, face flushed. A bandage is wrapped around her lower arm. “I’m okay,” she says again. “Can you come over here? I need to check your arm, sweetie.”

“You can’t, Mom.”

“I can. I need to make sure it’s not infected.” She hands William to Mulder. He is watching her curiously, but he carries William into the bathroom. Emily draws closer to the bed. She unwraps the bandage to study the wound. It’s thin and superficial, only enough to draw blood. The skin around it is also tinted green, but when she inhales, there is no sting of poison. “Could you hand me a fresh bandage, please?”

Emily does. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I know you are.” She winds the clean bandage around the wound. “I know why you did it, and it saved us. But you need to be careful. You could have hit an artery. There wouldn’t have been any way to save you then.” Scully lifts her daughter’s chin so that their eyes meet. “Promise me you won’t do that again.”

“What if someone comes again?”

“No one will,” she lies. “And if they do, you don’t need to worry about me and Mulder. If someone breaks into the house and they haven’t found you yet, get William and run for help. Do you understand? Can you promise me?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

  
  


**iii.**

She considered buying hair dye, but decided against it, in the end. Who knows how her three year old would react to her hair suddenly changing colors? Instead, she cuts both hers and Emily’s in a Walgreen’s bathroom. Hers has lightened slightly, but Emily’s has darkened, from a blonde to a strawberry blonde to a fiery red. She tries not to see the ghost of her sister when she glances at Emily in the mirror too quickly.

They move fast, not wanting to stay in any one place too long. The Consortium has muddied the government. Trust no one, as Deep Throat said. Keep running until your lungs give out, and don’t look back.

  
**iv.**

They meet him in Wisconsin. At a park, which seems innocent enough. “Is that Skinner?” William asks Scully, clutching at her hand.

“Mr. Skinner,” Scully corrects.

“C’mon, Scully, that didn’t work on Emily,” Mulder teases.

“Yeah, but all you ever call him when you talk to him, face to face, is ‘sir’,” Emily points out.

“Boss syndrome. You’ll understand when you get a job someday, kiddo.”

Skinner starts to greet them as “agents” and then backtracks embarrassedly. They do still greet him as sir. Habits are hard to break.

“Hi, Emily,” he says.

She smiles and waves awkwardly. Scully remembers that game of Monopoly, Skinner kneeling down in front of Emily and trying to figure out how to explain death. According to Mulder, he’d insisted on taking Emily to Maggie’s when she’d been in Antarctica and Mulder in the hospital. 

“William’s grown,” he comments.

“Hi, Skinner sir,” William replies.

Mulder grins. “How about you two go check out that playground over there? But stay where we can see you.”

The three of them sit on a park bench and talk. “Where are you headed?” Skinner asks them.

Scully shrugs. “We’re not sure.”

***

He buys a house in Washington with money from Mulder’s trust fund. The house is in his name, he says, so they shouldn’t be able to trace them there. 

  
**v.**

When they find the house, in the middle of the Okanogan National Forest, it’s unfurnished, barely finished. They sleep in air mattresses in the living room, guns in reach at all times.

The house slowly fills up with furniture. They build up a kitchen, bedrooms, a living room, an office for Mulder. Emily loves to go furniture hunting with Mulder, at yard sales or antique shops. They come back with elaborate stories about each piece of furniture. 

After three months, Scully calls Skinner and asks him to put her doctor credentials under a different name, Witness Protection Program Style. She gets a job at a hospital in the nearest town.

It’s a while before they stop keeping guns constantly at their sides. But they stay locked definitively in their bedside tables.


	4. the many ways i've tried

**four: the many ways i've tried**

_ 2005 _

**i.**

“I’ve been thinking about something,” Scully tells him.

He looks up at her over the top of his glasses. “About what?”

“About visiting my brothers,” she says. 

“Do they know you’re alive?” 

Scully shakes her head. “No. I told Mom she could tell them, but she never did. I was thinking maybe I should.”

“So we’re just going to go show up on your brothers’ doorsteps? ‘Surprise, we’re alive’?”

“I was thinking I should go by myself, actually. Give them some time to adjust.”

“Scully.” Mulder stands to talk to her better. “That could be dangerous.”

“Nothing’s happened in a year. They could find us if they wanted to. And besides, I have a gun.”

“Aren’t you estranged from Charlie?”

“Mulder.” She places a hand against his forearm. “I need to do this.”

He doesn’t argue.

 

**ii.**

She leaves on a Saturday with promises to call from the road. She isn’t sure when she’ll be back, she says. Mulder can’t help but wonder if this is revenge for leaving her. 

This is the first time he has been alone, truly alone, with the kids for longer than a few hours, and it goes fairly smoothly. Emily may bleed toxic blood, and William may have the occasional telekinetic outburst, but they are good kids. Especially for an almost four year old and an eleven year old.

Scully calls every day at 11:30 am sharp to assure them that she is doing fine. Until the fourth day, when she doesn’t. Mulder tries not to panic until the fifth, and sixth day pass without a call. He keeps everything in him calm, calling Maggie first, rationally. “Have you heard anything from Scu- Dana over the past couple of days?” (Because he still slips up and calls her Scully to her mother sometimes.)

“No, Fox, I’m sorry.” He can sense Maggie starting to panic. “Where is she?”

“She wanted to visit her brothers,” he says. “Although she didn’t mention which one. Have you heard from either of them?”

“I talked to Bill a few days ago. He didn’t mention her being there.”

Mulder is starting to get agitated. He works his thumbnail under a paint chip. “And Charlie?”

“Fox, I haven’t talked to Charlie since Dana’s funeral.”

He shudders a little. The paint chip moves away from the wall, and now there is a splotch of white sticking out against the gray paint. “And you don’t know where he is?”

“We don’t keep in touch.” Maggie’s voice offers some slight reassurance, to herself more so than him, he suspects. “But I’m sure it’s fine, and she just forgot to call. Or perhaps her phone is broken.”

Calm. Calm. He is calm. He thanks Maggie, and hangs up the phone, and calls to the kids. Pack a bag, he tells them. They’re going on a trip.

“Where to?” Emily calls from her bedroom. He hears a crash, and suspects she’s pulled a book from the bottom of her stack. 

“San Diego,” he decides on impulse. At least he knows for sure that they’ll find Bill there.

 

**iii.**

They drive down the West Coast with all the windows let down. Scully had never let him do that before. Emily sits in the front and makes up games to entertain William. Eventually, she turns the reins over to Mulder, who suggests they play “Spot the Monster”. William, who is crazy for his parents’ stories of hunting monsters, immediately quiets down and presses his nose against the window to scan the woods they are passing. Every now and then, he will announce that he saw something, and Mulder will ask him to describe it. His son’s stories are a lot more interesting than his.

They stop at a hotel, where Mulder dials Scully’s number a total of ten times with no answer. He sends her an email.  _ Scully, not at home. Went to find you. Answer your phone.  _ He hopes she is annoyed at him for overreacting when she answers. Or he hopes for an email explaining that her phone did break. He tells himself not to worst-case scenario because that never goes well.

He lets William and Emily stay up late to see the end of some inaccurate, bad alien flick, and lets them go to the lobby in their pajamas for breakfast in the morning. Emily brings him back a syrupy waffle on a Styrofoam plate and a plastic fork to eat it with. William brings him back a cup of coffee. He thanks them, and almost spits out the coffee when he sips it. William has dumped in around ten packets of sugar, Emily relays.

They get back on the road. William sleeps, still tired from his late night. Emily reads a bent up copy of  _ To Kill a Mockingbird _ . He would question whether a ten-year-old should be reading it, but Emily is the smartest ten-year-old he knows. 

She sticks a finger in the book to mark her place, and asks him, “You and Mom took road trips a lot before me, didn’t you?”

Mulder is somewhat grateful for the distraction. Romanticizing the past is so much better than coming up with twenty different scenarios in his head as he drives. “Yeah,” he says. “Some after, too, if you remember.”

She smiles slightly, and tucks her feet up under her. “What were they like?”

“There were always sunflower seeds everywhere,” he starts, unable to think of anything else. “It drove Scully crazy.”

Emily grins. “I’ll bet.”

“And I always had to drive,” he says. “Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. One time I told her it was because her little feet couldn’t reach the pedals.”

She stretches her legs out as far as she can. She is already taller than her mother. “I could probably drive.”

“Yeah, if you were a few years older,” Mulder teases her. “Oh - one time, she brought her dog along on the trip.” He remembers the animal shedding all over the backseat, whimpering and barking. At the time, he’d thought it was like the dog was their child.

“Queequeg,” Emily says. “Mom told me. Wasn’t that the trip he died on?”

“Oh. Yeah. Let’s not talk about that.” 

“Did you like going on road trips with Mom?”

He’d more than liked it. It sounded corny, but in that car, he could almost pretend they were in their own little world, shut off from everyone else. Just him and her and about a thousand miles to go. “Yeah,” he says.

“Why are we on this trip?” Emily asks. 

Mulder shrugs. He doesn’t want to tell her. She is too aware of the trauma stemming from years of not knowing where the other is.

***

He wasn’t expecting the reunion between himself and Bill Scully Jr. to go well, persay, but he hadn’t expected Bill to order him off of his porch before he could get a word out, either.

“Look, Bill…” he starts.

“I don’t want to hear it. I have no reason to associate with you, now that Dana is dead.”

_ Oh, this is going to go terribly.  _ “I just wanted to talk to you about something…”

“I don’t want to hear it.” Bill goes to slam the door in his face.

Mulder is considering the consequences of yelling _ your sister is alive and by the way, has she stopped by lately _ , when they both hear the voice from behind them. “Mulder?”

Bill pales instantly at the sight of Emily on his front lawn. Mulder doesn’t exactly blame him. She looks like the ghost of both of his sisters, even if she is dressed in ragged jeans and a T-shirt, stained with dirt from playing outside with William.

William runs up behind her, grabbing her hand. “It’s too hot here, Daddy,” he says. “Can we leave? Who’s that?”

“How…?” Bill mutters. “How…?”

Mulder crosses his arms with a sigh. “Didn’t I tell you two to stay in the car?”

Emily ignores him. She steps closer. “Hey, Uncle Bill.”

Bill’s face turns a different shade, a shade of purple. “ _ Emily _ ?”

She nods.

“But… how… you’re dead!” His eyes land on the boy standing beside her. “Is that _ William _ ?”

“I’m William,” he agrees. Addressing Emily, he asks, “Is that our uncle?”

Bill grabs Mulder by the shirt and pulls him up onto the porch. “Whoa - hey! Hey!” Mulder protests.

“You’d better explain yourself right now,” he growls. “Where’s Dana?”

“I was going to ask you that!” Mulder says, twisting away. “She’d told me she was going to come and visit you!”

“You son of a bitch…” He looks past him at Emily and William. “Get out of here,” he growls. “Get out of here, and leave them alone.” 

He is trying to figure out why he ever thought this would be a good idea. “Look,” he says calmly. How is he still so calm? “You have the wrong impression here…”

“The hell I do,” Bill growls. 

“Stop it!” Emily shouts. Mulder looks back at her. She’s taken another step forward, hands balled into fists. “In case you were wondering, we were with Mulder because we want to be,” she spits. “He’s Will’s  _ father _ . So would you please stop trying to beat him up and let us explain why we came here?”

Bill blinks once, twice, and steps back from Mulder. Mulder is staring at Emily with a half amazement. Irony, he’s sure, that Emily has saved him several times, just like her mother. 

The door behind them slams open, and a blonde woman steps out. Bill’s wife, whatever her name is. She starts to ask what is going on, but then she spots Emily and William on the lawn, and her mouth closes, and then opens again.

“You should come inside, I guess,” Bill says gruffly.

***

Mulder relays to Bill and Tara (because that’s her name, right) what has happened to them recently. Emily jumps in to add in details, and Mulder stares at the wall above Tara’s head with embarrassment. And then Matthew wanders into the room, and they have to explain the entire thing again. 

“I guess you haven’t seen Dana,” he says. He has gotten better at calling her that. 

They haven’t. Mulder says that they need to go. Bill follows them to the door, and just before he leaves, a hand comes down on his shoulder. “Will you let me know when you find her?” he asks, and Mulder recognizes this face, the face of a worried older brother. Really, he and Bill aren’t so unalike, he supposes. 

“I will,” he promises.

***

“I want to see it,” Emily says, and it takes a moment to realize she means her old house, because he forgets she was raised by different people in a house in San Diego for three years. He isn’t sure where to go, but some part of her memory is accessed and she directs him through the neighborhoods.

Here is where her mother died. Here is where her father was led out in handcuffs. Here is where Scully led her out and strapped her in a car seat, and fastened the cross around her neck, the cross she still wears. Mulder wasn’t here for any of it, but Scully relayed it to him a few times, her hand cold in his under the blankets. Emily stares up at the house and wipes her eyes.

  
**iv.**

Mulder really doesn’t know where Charlie Scully lives, so he calls Skinner and asks him to run a background check. He also asks if Skinner has heard from Scully. The answer is no as well.

Minnesota. Who leaves their family to live in Minnesota? Mulder can’t say he is impressed by this mystery Scully so far.

They stop to get gas, and Mulder hands the kids a twenty and tells them to make a supply run while he pumps gas. They are back in an astonishing five minutes, with armloads of chips, gum, and Little Debbie’s Cakes, and a  _ California Dreaming!  _ baseball cap jammed down on William’s head. (Mulder could comment on his refusal to wear anything Knicks related, but he won’t.) “Don’t tell your mother,” he says with grudging admiration.  _ Providing we ever see her again, that is.  _

“Hey, Mulder,” Emily says from the backseat, where she is sitting to share in the bounty with William. When he turns his head to look at her, she tosses a packet of sunflower seeds, and it lands squarely in his lap.

***

They stop for a “real dinner” in Vegas, at a greasy McDonald's. Emily promises to take William gambling. Mulder tells them only if they want Scully to murder him profoundly. They stop for the night in Utah, only after Mulder asks Emily to drive for a while, and she tells him, “For God’s sake, Mulder, stop, you look like you’re about to fall over.” Out of the mouth of babes comes the wisdom and sarcasm of their mothers. 

He is trying not to make this a boring road trip. He stops in at the Salt Lake, and lets them splash around. He tells William stories to keep him from getting bored. He gets bored, anyway. Four year old boys shouldn’t be confined to the car for long periods of time. 

He dials Scully’s number at pay phones at rest areas. When his fingers feel slightly numb from hitting the little buttons, he tries her old phone numbers. Someone actually picks up at the oldest one. Agitated older woman who asks him if he loves the Lord. He might’ve found it funny under different circumstances.

He drives almost obsessively, coffee growing stale in its Styrofoam cup, kids huddled together in the backseat. He waits for the phone to ring, but it never does.

  
**v.**

He opens the door to their hotel room in response to the knock, and there is Scully, looking tired. Her hair is wrenched back in a sloppy knot, and one of his jackets, the brown one, is draped over her shoulders.

“Scully.” He pulls her close, embracing her tightly.

She rests her forehead against his shoulder. “How are the kids?”

“They're fine.” Mulder pulls her outside of the motel room, closing the door so as not to disturb them. “Scully, are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she says. She looks it, too - it looks as though she's has been traveling, her clothes are wrinkled and she has circles under her eyes, but there are no perceivable wounds.

“Where have you been?”

Scully grimaces, drags a hand under her eyes. “Mulder, listen…”

“I was worried,” he says. “We went to see Bill, to look for you.”

“My God, you went to see  _ Bill _ ?”

“Scully, what choice did I have?” He crosses his arms for an attempt at authority. “Although Bill saw Emily and William, and instantly came to the conclusion that I was holding the three of you captive, and it took assurance on Emily's part that I was not.”

“Mulder,” she says. “Believe it or not, there was a reason that I did all of this, and it wasn't so you'd take the kids on some crazed road trip to hunt me down. “

“Well, why was it, then? Why did you have to stop calling me - and  _ lie _ to me, I assume? What was the purpose?”

“Mulder,” she says in a tight tone that he hasn't heard in years. “Everything I have done for the past few years has been for you. You and the kids.”

He scoffs. “That's a good one.”

“I left my entire life behind!”

“And I'm not denying that. What I'm curious about is now this was for us.”

“It was for Emily,” she says. “Reyes emailed, saying she had a lead, and I flew out to help her look for it.”

Mulder blinks. It's what he would've done, but he can't forgive her for doing the same. “You went on your own?”

“We couldn't have both gone, Mulder, “ she says in that same calm, rational voice. “We didn't have anyone to stay with the kids.”

“We could've brought them, or…” Mulder looks back at the closed door instinctively, even though he knows they're both still asleep in there. “You didn't have to lie to me, though! What if you had died, Scully? What then? Were we supposed to keep searching every inch of the country for you?”

“Reyes would have told you if something had happened to me.”

He has been calm throughout this all, but he can't maintain the calm demeanor anymore. “You could've kept calling, Scully, “ he says, voice pleading. “Why'd you have to stop calling?”

Scully winces, and rubs her eyes. “I thought you might figure out what was going on.”

Mulder grimaces. “Why couldn't you just tell me, Scully?”

Her gaze turns sharp. “Mulder, it's not as if this is something you've never done before. You’ve ditched me plenty.”

“That’s not the point,” he says. “Did you find anything?”

She grimaces a little, looks back at the door like she’s checking on them. He pushes past her, headed towards the car.

“Where are you going?” she calls after him.

“Don’t know.”

“Are you coming back?”

He turns to face her. He’s not going to play with her. She doesn’t deserve that. “I will. I just need some time.” He slams the door behind him.

***

When he gets back, the kids are up, and sharing a box of donuts on the bed. William is coated in powdered sugar, and he announces, “I found Mom!” triumphantly as he offers Mulder a donut.

“Mom found  _ us _ ,” Emily corrects him as Mulder takes the donut. Scully smiles at him from the bed. She has showered and stolen his Knicks t-shirt, but she’s still wearing his jacket.

“That she did,” he agrees, taking the donut from William’s hand. “You guys had better get ready to go, okay?” He starts past them towards the bathroom. 

Scully grabs his wrist gently. “Mulder, I’m sorry,” she says in a low voice. “What I did wasn’t fair, and I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

He kisses her cheek, and ignores the twist of resentment in his stomach. “It’s okay.” 

When he exits the bathroom, they are outside, William climbing up the trunk of the car, and Scully tugging him down with a laugh. “You ready to go, Mulder?” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a long drive back though, we should-”

“Uh, Mom says we’re going to Minnesota,” Emily says, poking her head out of the passenger door.

Mulder flicks an eyebrow up. “Really?”

Scully shrugs. “I should see my brother.”

“We gotta get Dad some sunflower seeds first,” William says.

“Oh, definitely.” She reaches out and pulls him to the car. “Can’t forget that.”

 


	5. but still they lead me back

**five: but still they lead me back**

_ 2006 _

**i.**

She can't help but feel a little left out, because Mulder and the kids are stuck in the house all day, with lots of time to goof off. William has inherited his father's love of space, and spends hours flipping through books about stars and planets. They go outside and look at the stars most nights. Emily loves reading in any particular subject - Scully's medical books, Mulder's monster books, old case files that she smuggles out of their bedroom. She walks to the town library for more books, sometimes in the rain. Scully guesses she shouldn't be surprised, since she tackled  _ Moby Dick  _ at age five. She and Mulder love having long, intellectual discussions. 

William is really Emily's best friend, since they rarely leave the property. They spend lots of time playing board games or watching movies (they'd found  _ The Lazarus Bowl  _ at a thrift shop, and none of them have lived it down) or exploring the woods. Mulder takes them camping a lot in the woods surrounding their house. Scully has no warning, she’ll just come home from the hospital to find the sky above the woods choked with smoke, and a bag of marshmallows missing from the pantry. 

Scully is usually invited on these escapades, but she always declines. The woods do not hold good memories for her. Mulder will usually joke about the case in Florida with the Mothmen when he asks her. She actually remembers that one fondly, with Mulder sprawled in her lap, and her out-of-tune voice echoing through the forest. It was one of the last cases before she’d left to take care of Emily. 

When she comes home to find them gone again after a particularly challenging day, she relishes the chance to spend some time alone, maybe watch a movie that doesn’t have a damn alien in it. 

Sometime around when the sky begins to darken, she hears a thunder clap outside, and the sky opens up. Scully spends a good five minutes trying to decide whether to go after them, before she gives up and steals an umbrella and a pair of Mulder’s boots.

Walking in the rain is miserable, she doesn’t know how she did it so many times with Mulder on cases before, and remember that time when frogs fell from the sky, and she is cursing her entire family when she comes across them and their soaked campsite, huddling under a tarp. William and Emily both look grumpy, and Scully can’t help but laugh loudly.

“I want to point out that this is all Mulder’s fault,” Emily says.

Mulder doesn’t exactly look happy, either, with water dripping in his face. “How is it my fault?”

“You said, ‘hey, guys, do you wanna go camping again tonight’,” William says. He seems to be using Mulder’s body as a shelter in addition to the tarp.

“And I control the weather? I’m not the Rain King!” Scully rolls her eyes in reference to a case Mulder had worked before he’d officially been given the X Files back and she’d come back as well.

“Yeah, but you could’ve looked up the weather,” Emily points out.

“Do you know what we did in the days before Internet when we wanted to know the weather?”

“Okay,” Scully says then, still laughing. “Let’s not have this argument. Let’s get you three home before you get hypothermia.”

It’s not exactly an efficient walk back, what with the slipping in the mud, and fighting over who gets the umbrella and who is stuck with the tarp. By the time they get back, they are all beyond soaked. Scully pulls Mulder into a kiss before they go inside. Emily splashes William with the water streaming down from the gutter.

  
**ii.**

Scully suspects Mulder has always cast himself in the role of Emily’s father. He would never necessarily call himself that, but he could tell in the way he would talk about her. She remembers meeting the Gunmen for dinner one time (she’d lamented on needing a night out over the phone to him, and apparently, that was his idea of one), and when they’d asked about Emily, Mulder had rambled on about how smart she was, and her drawings were so great, and she was just like Scully, wasn’t she? All she’d been able to do was nod along and hide her smile behind her napkin.

When they’d taken the Arcadia case (he’d asked her about a thousand times if she was sure she wanted to leave Emily, and she’d told him that this would practically be a vacation for her, and he’d turned a little red and threw out some jokes about marriage being no vacation), he’d told all the neighbors about “my wife’s daughter” who’d be joining them as soon as it was convenient and they were settled in. (What with all the rules of that place, she was surprised they didn’t have a rule against small children.) She’d pretended not to watch him on the plane ride home as he slept with his head on the armrest. Emily had pointed out that she was still wearing the ring two days later, and she’d immediately blushed and taken it off. Emily had informed her that she should marry Mulder if she liked the ring so much.

She’d gone to Africa for him when he got sick. Later he’d asked her why, she had a daughter. He managed to connect everything to that. She’d done it for him. 

Her father had traveled a lot, constantly going out to sea. When she’d gone back to the X Files, after New York, after they were reinstated, he’d taken as few cases that involved traveling as possible. She’d noticed it. But you could hardly  _ not  _ travel at a job like theirs. Before Oregon, when the FBI had suggested they do their work at a desk, he’d been relieved, saying, “Now we won’t have to leave her so much.” They’d never come to any decision about it, but secretly, she’d hated the idea. She wanted to be close to her daughter, but she’d secretly loved traveling with him. 

  
  


**iii.**

They shovel snow in the dawn, and by the time they tramp into the house, Scully has already gone to the hospital. Mulder greets them at the door, beard shaggy, clothes reflective of their isolation. He helps William with his boots while he tells Emily about an article he read the other day. “Written by a scientist,” he says. “It said that the probability of, say, Bigfoot is high. It could be some kind of mutant, an evolved human.”

“Like the X-Men?” Emily quips. “X-Men for the X Files?”

“No, like some species of human that's living out in the woods, and has adapted to the environment in a way that they can easily survive, and happens to have a lot of hair. Remember what I told you about the Jersey Devil? Remember the story of the Mothmen in Florida?”

Emily rolls her eyes. “You're testing out your argument for Mom, aren't you.”

“You know, I think this may be the time I convince her.” Mulder finally jars William's boot loose and tosses it in the corner.

“I believe you,” William says seriously.

“Thanks, bud. At least someone in this family is open-minded.”

Emily picks up the discarded boot and sets it with the rest of the shoes. (Scully likes a neat house, and since the boys are anything but neat, Emily picks up by instinct at this point.) “I seem to remember you enjoying Mom arguing your theories once or twice,” she says.

Mulder smirks. “Oh, and Scully said to…” He pulls out a sheet of paper and reads off. “...read the next two chapters in science, math, and history…”

“Did that.”

He looks over at her, and adds, “And answer the questions at the end?”

“Yep. Ready for her to check.”

“Overachiever.” He grins at her, and turns to William. “You need to do some lessons today, too, buddy.”

“Aww,” he whines, turning up the eyes that he thinks will work on Mulder. (They won't. It's taken five years, but Scully has trained him well.)

“No buts. Your mom will kill me if I let you slack off another day.”

“Come on, Will,” Emily says encouragingly. “Mulder can help you out.”

“I like it better when Mom helps me out.”

Mulder looks hurt. “From belief to betrayal. Isn't that ironic?”

“Yeah, well, good luck,” Emily says. “If you have too much trouble with him, I can take over this afternoon.”

“I can hear you!” William shouts as she leaves the room.

“We really don't know that she was talking to me, do we?” Mulder replies.

They give up around noon, and watch  _ 2001: A Space Odyssey  _ instead.

***

It’s clear that Mulder is trying to make dinner when a drawn out, “ _ Shit _ ”, followed by a, “Sh- crap. William, you didn't hear that!” echoes throughout the house. Scully gets home at seven, and they eat at seven fifteen.

Mulder tries to argue his earlier point and Scully rolls her eyes, and it's reminiscent of Emily's early days when they would work on case files while Emily colored. Emily jumps in and out of the argument while William sculpts something with his rice and the back of his fork as a tool.

“But we saw it before! Those people in the woods, the Jersey Devil,” Mulder says now.

“Mulder, the last of those were killed.”

“Not necessarily. There was suggestion that there was offspring.”

“And where did you say the article was based?” Emily asks. “Washington state.”

“I never said that.”

“I know. I snuck into your office and read it while you were trying to make dinner.”

“And what did you think?” Scully asks pointedly, eyeing Mulder.

“I thought the evidence was… sound, but it seemed very implausible to me, overall.”

Scully gives him a smug look.

Mulder shrugs. “And what do you think, Will?”

William looks up from his mound of food. “I think Bigfoot is definitely real, and so is the Abdominal Snowman. And Dad saw something in New Jersey.”

Mulder fixes Scully with a pointed look in return.

“William will believe anything you tell him,” she replies calmly.

“So will Mulder,” Emily points out.

Scully laughs.

  
  
**iv.**

When Emily and Scully had moved in, cases had been harder. He could tell that Scully was less worried about what would happen with Emily if she was killed on the job. But what if they were both killed? He’d tried to keep them in one place for as long as possible. But after Pfaster, Scully had been closed off. She wanted to get away, so Mulder had taken a case in Santa Monica, a headless magician to take her mind off of it. 

When Mulder’s mother had died, and Scully had confirmed that it was indeed, suicide, and he’d gone looking for his sister only to find her dead as well, she’d come with him. He’d been grateful for that much, at least. He couldn’t get his sister back, and now his mother would never meet the little girl he considered his daughter (secretly, in the back of his mind), but at least he had a partner who would follow him.

Wayne Federman hadn’t known about Emily when he met them - Skinner did a good job of keeping secrets - but when they’d taken Emily to Hollywood to see his movie, she’d thought it was hilarious. Between the audience’s delight, Skinner’s thumbs up aimed at Federman, and Emily’s loud laughter between them, the movie had been more than enough embarrassment. She hadn’t stopped talking about it on the flight back. 

The last trip they’d taken together before the trip to Massachusetts was the one to Oregon. Mulder had thrown it out casually. “One last trip before they shut us down,” he’d said. Scully had readily agreed. One last hoorah, back to the place where it’d all began. They’d dropped off Emily at Maggie’s and told her it would probably be the last time. Mulder hates that he was right.

He hates that he made the decision that he did. He wishes he’d insisted on taking Scully to the hospital, and they’d found out together and flown home to tell Emily. Make appointments with the doctor and Lamaze classes. Told Scully’s mother over dinner. Picked out a house and things for the baby’s room. Not that he doesn’t appreciate the life he has now, but sometimes he hates the abnormality of it. He wishes he could’ve given them a normal life.

  
**v.**

“We should go to the beach,” William says.

They are all four on the couch, and William is the most awake out of all of them. He bounces up and down, jostling the cushion and waking up Emily, who had dozed off with her glasses hanging off of one ear.

“The beach, huh?” Mulder mutters. He reaches for the remote, and curls his fingers around it. 

“Yeah, I think it’d be fun. No, don’t turn off the TV yet! I’m still watching.”

He groans and lets the remote clatter to the floor. Scully nudges his leg with her foot, but he has no intention of going to find it. Emily yanks the blanket so that it’s covering her. 

“So, can we go?” William asks. He is pressed between Scully and Mulder. Scully’s hand is resting against Mulder’s side, so her arm has him trapped against the back of the couch. It was a good idea to go for the enormous one. He was right. He makes a note to inform the girls in the morning.

“Scully?”

“Ask your father, William.”

He comes up with a quick plan of revenge.

“Dad?” His son pokes him in the side of the face. 

“Sure,” he mutters. “We can go to the beach.”


	6. it always leads me here

**six: it always leads me here**

_2007_

**i.**

The car sputters once, twice, and comes to a stop as Mulder veers to the side of the road. “Ah, shit,” Emily says, swinging her feet down from the dashboard as she leans forward to get a better look.

“Don’t say shit,” Mulder says automatically. He gets out to check out the car. Definitely dead. He trudges back in defeat. “Yep. We’re not going anywhere. And my phone is dead.”

“Mom said you should charge it,” Emily points out.

“Well, if I did everything your mom told me to do, I’d be in trouble a lot less.” He pulls the keys out of the ignition. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re walking to town. The auto shop can send a tow truck, and we can call your mom to come get us. Or hitchhike, or something.”

Emily makes a face and juts out her lower lip in a good imitation of William’s pout that he usually works for more ice cream after dinner. “Shouldn’t I stay and watch the car?”

“Nice try, but no. Do I need to tell you about all the bad things that happen on the sides of roads?”

Emily groans as she exits the car.

“Besides, I want the company,” he adds.

“Oh, nice try, Fox Mulder.” She pulls her hair back into a stubby ponytail. With her mother's cross dangling around her neck, she is almost the spitting image of 1993 era Scully. “Nice. Try.”

“Hey, now,” he says cheerfully, locking the car and following her down the road. “Ix-nay on the first ame-nay.”

Emily shrugs. They walk along the road. It's dark and isolated. Mulder would protest living in the middle of nowhere if it weren't for safety issues. He misses DC, the echoes of cars and people, the cramped feeling of it all.

“Look at the stars,” Emily says, pointing. “Will would be mad he missed this.”

“I'm not,” he replies. “One of us would have had to carry him.”

“I would suggest you take a picture, but we seem to be missing a phone.”

  
**ii.**

“What was Mom like when you met her?”

“Have we gotten to the part of the nature walk where we confess secrets and bond?”

“Yes. Now answer the question.”

Mulder shrugs. “She was young.”

“Cause that's helpful. Was she as unimaginative as she is now?”

Mulder snorts. “Worse.”

“Poor you.”

Mulder grins a little of the memory of the early days. She laughed a lot easier, he remembers that. “Go easy on your poor mother. How would you react if you got stuck with a job chasing down monsters with some nut?”

“When did you fall in love with her?”

Mulder looks over at her. She shrugs. “I'm a teenage girl. Love stories make me swoon.”

“I couldn't tell you,” he says. “It just happened.” He can remember looking at her and thinking _I love you I love you I love you_ with a fierce burning in his chest, but he can't even remember when it first happened.

“What was your third case?”

Mulder flicks an eyebrow up. “Why the third?”

“Testing you. Wanna see if you remember.”

“Liver eating mutant. Did I never tell you about that?”

“I remember your cases from when I was a kid. I remember the one about the psycho psychiatrist and the moving trees.” She laughs, sniffs. “Oh, or the one when you were in Maine and calling Mom every five minutes about the evil doll.”

Mulder laughs, too. “How much _do_ you remember from those days?”

“Oh, everything,” she says. “I remember the first night Mom brought you home. Skinner called her, and she got really upset and called Grandma in to babysit.”

He'd always wondered how she ended up at that warehouse in time to save him. He morbidly wonders what Bowman planned to do with him if she hadn't showed up.

“And the one with the computer, God. I think Frohike was the one who called her that time, and she ran out in a panic for that one, too, but only after yelling a lot.”

Mulder nods in agreement. She's saved his life too many times.

“I told her to go back,” she says. “Before she went to New York, and… you know. I thought you guys needed each other.” She pauses for a minute, and then says, “That was terrible, wasn't it? New York.”

He grimaces. “It was.” He'd rushed Emily to the airport to take her up to see her mom. She'd asked him if Scully would live, on the airplane, and he'd excused himself, emotions running over. It'd taken a lot to keep from punching the bathroom mirror.

“Thanks for being there,” she says.

  


**iii.**

“My feet are killing me,” Emily groans. “Carry me?”

Mulder laughs. Emily is just a few inches shorter than him at this point, and they both tease Scully mercilessly. “Nice try, but I don't think that would work out well.”

He'd used to be able to do it all the time. Scully had asked him to babysit, once, soon after. He'd agreed, but questioned why she didn't ask her mother. “Emily likes you,” Scully had told him. “She asks when you're coming again all the time.”

She'd gotten sick, and he hadn't known what to do, calling Scully frantically. She hadn't picked up. Emily asked to watch TV, so he'd scooped her up and carried her to the couch, piling blankets on top of her.

It'd become frequent, staying with her. He'd been around a lot first because he missed Scully, but sooner than he expected, he'd grown to miss her and her wide eyed questions. He'd carry her to bed when she'd fall asleep on the rug.

When he'd taken her to New York, and Scully hadn't woken up yet, Maggie had come and offered to take Emily, because there was no clear attachment between them, not yet. She'd clutched his hand and insisted, “I want to stay with Mulder.” She'd climbed into his lap in the hotel room, and he'd held her while they both cried.

The carrying to bed thing had become a worse habit after they'd moved in with him, after Pfaster had come back and Scully hadn't wanted them to stay in that apartment. She'd scolded him every time it had happened, mostly for letting her fall asleep on the rug in front of the TV, but it was as much a routine as brushing his teeth in the morning at this point.

After he'd died and come back, Scully had led Emily in. She'd stared at him like she was expecting something grisly. He'd smiled at her, trying to off some reassurance. She’d come over to the bed and climbed up next to him, and even though Scully had told her to get down, he'd helped her up. “I missed you,” she’d whispered.

“Bummer,” Emily says now. She grins, and he wishes she was still small enough to be carried.

  


**iv.**

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Tell you about what?”

Emily toes the ground. “Uh, me, I guess. Where it is I come from. I mean, I know it's connected to your sister and aliens and shit, but, like… what am I? Why do I bleed St. Patrick's Day themed blood?”

Mulder studies her carefully. She may be the size and have the stature of a full grown adult, but she is still only thirteen. Only a year older than he was when Samantha was taken. “I don't know.”

“Please. I want to know why I am the way I am. I want to know why they killed my other parents, why they did what they did to you and Mom.”

Mulder sighs, sensing hr is going to regret this. “All right, I'll tell you.”

He outlines it out for her from the beginning, starting wit the fuck-ups of Bill Mulder and CGB Spender or whoever the smoker is. He leaves out as much as he can, but there are some things that he can't leave out. She flinches when he gets to the parts about Scully.

“So you think I was conceived during her abduction with alien DNA,” she says.

“That's our belief, yes.”

She stares at the road as they walk. He shouldn't have told her.

“It's my fault.”

Emily's head snaps up. “Why do you say that?”

“If your mother hadn't been assigned to me, none of this ever would've happened.”

“It's not your fault.”

“It is. I…”

“No, it's not. It's not your fault.” She kicks a stone. It goes scuttling down into the runoff trench. “Besides. I have you beat in one category. You had two fathers, I have three.”

He's confused for a second, about what she is talking about. _Three? Her biological, who may or may not be alien, and her adopted, but… oh._ Oh.

As they round the crest of a hill, the lights of the town rise up to meet them. “Oh, finally,” Emily moans.

 

**v.**

He calls Scully with the phone at the office. She is relieved to hear from him, but no, she can't come get him, William is asleep.

Mulder hangs up the phone as the mechanic enters. “Got someone going for your car now,” the man says.

“Don't suppose you could give us a ride home?” he asks.

“Nope. Sorry. That'll cost extra.”

There is no taxi service in a small town like this. With a groan, Mulder has out into the waiting area and addresses Emily, who is bent over in a hard chair. “You want to get some food?”

She blinks up at him tiredly. “Huh?”

“Can't get a ride back. Figured we could use the energy. You want something to eat?”

They get tacos and eat them sitting on top of a picnic table at the park. By the time they are done, Emily seems to have gained some energy. As they approach the road, she suddenly takes off running. “Race you!”

“You'll win!” Mulder calls out tiredly. Her hair slips free of the ponytail holder and flies out behind her like a banner as her sneakers pound the pavement and she laughs wildly.


	7. don't leave me waiting here

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: the kinda gory nightmare sequence with a (nightmare!) character death is in section 2 and contains blood

**seven: don't leave me waiting here**

_ 2008 _

**i.**

There’s a phone call that starts it all. Because that’s how it happens, isn’t it. A phone call that sets everything into motion. It’s a call from DC, a call from Skinner, for Mulder.

Scully loads the dishwasher as he talks to him out in the hall. She pretends to be scouring the porcelain surface for spots when really she is listening to Mulder’s half of the conversation. “No, I’ll definitely consider it,” he says. “I’ll just have to talk to Scully first.” Pause. “I’m surprised they wanted me, actually.

This catches her attention, and she turns her eyes up to the door. 

“Yes, I’ll get back as soon as possible. Goodbye, sir.” Mulder hangs his phone up, and steps into the kitchen. Scully slips the plate onto the rack, and studies him definitively. 

“That was Skinner,” he begins, pushing his sleeves up.

“I figured that out,” she says, offering up a small smile.

“The FBI wants my assistance with a case. Kidnapped federal agent, psychic who claims to be connected to her. A Dakota Whitney is on the case, but Doggett and Reyes didn’t have much insight to offer. Not much experience with psychics, I guess. So they suggested calling me.”

Scully shrugs. “You are the expert.”

“And you aren’t?” He smiles sheepishly. “Now I just have to figure out how to politely tell Skinner no.”

“I think we should go.”

He blinks a little. “Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, you’ve been missing the field, haven’t you? And this might be a chance to save a woman’s life. You have to take that into consideration.”

“I know. That’s the hard part of it all.”

“I think we should go,” she repeats.

“There’s no ‘we’ in this, Scully.”

“We could take the kids with us, Mulder. It’s in the DC area? They could stay with Mom.”

“That’s not the issue. You’ve successfully faked your death for, what, seven years now? If we arrive together and start investigating, then your cover will be blown.”

“What does it matter? They found us before.”

“And that doesn’t mean we need to advertise your location.” He steps closer, and presses two fingers to the top of her wrist. “Look, you know I’ve missed working cases together, and I’d give anything for you to come with me. But I don’t want to do it at risk of you and the kids. If I go, I go alone.”

“You’ll need backup, or you’ll be at risk,” she mutters.

Mulder winds a strand of her hair around his finger. “Doggett and Reyes had your back for two years, and you had theirs. They owe you.”

***

“Any monsters?” William asks at lunch the next day.

“Unfortunately, no. Just a psychic,” Mulder explains. 

William is disappointed. He pouts over his sandwich, picking it apart.

“What's the case?” Emily asks.

“A kidnapping. Agent Monica Bannan. This psychic priest may have some information on her whereabouts.”

“Do you think he's involved?”

“I don't know yet.”

William stabs his grilled cheese with a fork. “Will you tell me if you see any monsters?”

“Sure, buddy.” Mulder pokes him in the stomach. “And you’ll keep an eye out for the Abdominal Snowman?”

“Sure, Dad.” A chunk of melty cheddar and bread goes flying. Emily jumps up to clean it off the floor.

“I’ll be headed out tonight. Will, remember that your sister will be in charge during the day while I’m gone, and you need to get some school work done, okay?”

William grumbles something and kicks the counter.

“Is the case dangerous?” Emily stares up at him from the floor where she is trying to scrape the chunk of sandwich from the tile.

Mulder shrugs. “Who knows? But I’ll be fine.”

 

**ii.**

Scully is running. She mounts the edge of a snowy hill, boots slipping on the snow, to see a man holding up an axe. Her numbed fingers reach and close around a stick. “Hey!” she shouts, too late. The axe falls.

“No,” she whispers. The man is already advancing on her, axe blade smeared with blood. She swings the wood, and it makes contact with his face. He falls back, unconscious. She is already pushing past him. 

“No,” she tries to scream, but her voice can only come out in a rasp, because there he is, blood pooling in the snow, and her fingers brush his neck, but it is as cold as the biting air, and still, no life, no movement, no pulse…

She wakes up gasping for air, as if the nightmare had collapsed her lungs. Shoving aside heavy sheets, she reaches out towards Mulder’s side of the bed, whispering his name ( _ Mulder Mulder Mulder _ ), but he is not there. 

“Mom?” Emily shoves the door open and enters the room, scanning it frantically. “You okay?”

She nods shakily, and leans back against his pillow.

“Nightmare?” Her daughter sits on the bed beside her. 

“Yeah,” she says. She clears her throat, and shoves the blankets aside. “It’s silly, but…” She halfway laughs. “Would you all want to fly in to DC?”

“You worried about Mulder?” Emily asks. “Because of the nightmare.”

Scully nods. She’d feel sillier, but things like these are what her life was run on back in her X-Files days. “I just… I worry. I’d like to be close to him.”

She nods knowingly. “I feel the same way. And I doubt William would care. He’s never been in a plane before. He’d enjoy it.” 

***

Scully texts Mulder before they get onto the plane.  _ Headed to DC. Don’t panic, keeping a low profile. We’ll be at my mom’s.  _ William is practically bouncing with excitement. The cross, her cross, which had been a present from Emily on his seventh birthday, bounces with him as he jumps. He’d been excited to hear about the fact that all of his family had worn it at one point or another. Scully had known that Mulder had held onto it when she’d been abducted, but she hadn’t known he’d worn it. She’d almost cried when she’d heard him say that.

Halfway to DC, she gets a text from Skinner.  _ Mulder missing. Car crashed - don’t think he was in it. Looking into it more. _

  
  


**iii.**

Maggie meets them at baggage claim, accompanied by Skinner, who Scully had told to come. She doesn’t want to waste a minute in locating Mulder. She checks Emily's jacket, William's scarf, before walking over to meet them.

“Mom, I'm sorry to be abrupt like this, but could you take the kids, please? I need to find Mulder. Skinner’s going to take me.”

“Of course, Dana,” she says, reaching out to take William's hand.

“Wait, Mom, I want to come,” Emily says. She hadn’t reacted well to the news of Mulder’s disappearance.

Scully looks back at her daughter. Her eyes are wide and pleading. She remembers Emily as a child, asking if she'd found Mulder every day when she'd returned from work. She'd found her crying in the closet about a week after the funeral. “I miss him,” she’d said. “I miss him.” 

“Emily,” she says. “I can't. You know that.”

She blinks harshly. “And I can't do this again, Mom. I’ve done it too many times.”

She starts to offer some, any comfort, but William steps forward, pulling Maggie with him, hooking his pinkie around hers. “Em, come with me,” he says. “Come with me, please.”

Scully steps forward, kissing both of their foreheads (first William’s, then Emily's). “It'll be okay,” she says. “I'll call you with news, okay?”

  
  


**iv.**

Scully brushes her fingers across Mulder's forehead. He sits huddled under a blanket, waiting for the doctors to clear him. “How's your head?”

“Okay,” he says.

She leans down and kisses his cheek. It'd been close, although not as close as before. She'd managed to knock the perp out with a stick before his axe struck Mulder. She'd ended up inside checking on the kidnap victim, and come outside to find Skinner cradling an unconscious Mulder. “You said he needed to be kept warm,” he'd said by way of explanation. 

She traces his jawline with her index finger and smiles. “I should let the kids know you were okay,” she says. “They were worried.”

He smiles back, although it seems strained by the effects of hypothermia. “Tell Emily I'm sorry I didn't bring her a souvenir.”

“Sure, Mulder,” she says. She goes outside, and pulls out her phone. She is prepared to answer her mother's questions while assuring her that Mulder is okay, and then explain it to Emily and William a few times. 

What she is not prepared for is Emily picking up the phone, her words coming out hard and fast. “Is Dad okay?”

She freezes, looks back at Mulder slumped in the chair, and smiles. 

“I mean, Mulder-” Emily stammers, embarrassed. “Is, is, is Mulder… Mom? Mom, is that you?”

“Yeah,” Scully tells her. “Your dad is okay.”

***

Mulder clears his throat and fiddles with the zipper on his coat in the passenger seat. “You know, Skinner offered to let us come back. Work on the X Files unit again.”

Scully smiles. “Oh, Mulder. We could move back and be close to my mom.”

“Emily and William could go to real school,” he says excitedly. “Do you think it’s dangerous?”

“I’d say at this point that enough people know that we’re alive that it doesn’t really matter. Oh, do you think we could get your old place?”

“I don’t think there’s enough room for four people in that apartment.”

She smiles, tapping the steering wheel with her index finger absently. “We’ll find a place, Mulder.”

He looks at her. “Do you want to go back, Scully?”

“Do I even need to answer that question?”

***

They get to Maggie's, and William is the first to greet them, jumping on Mulder with excitement and asking rapid for questions about the case. Mulder hugs him tightly before Scully moves him away. “Be gentle,” she tells him. “He's still a little banged up.”

Mulder rolls his eyes. 

Emily comes out from the living room then, and immediately runs to hug him. “Are you okay, Dad?” she asks.

Mulder looks a little surprised, but he immediately replies with, “Yeah, I'm okay, I'm okay.”

“Why did Emily call him Dad?” William whispers into Scully's ear. She never does that.”

“She did today,” Scully whispers back. “Don't mention it, okay?”

  
  


**v.**

He'd been halfway out the door when he'd seen her. A small girl with Scully's eyes in the kitchen, wearing oversized pink pajamas. She'd stared up at him in silence. He hadn't known what to say besides, “I'm sorry.”

Scully had entered then, addressing Emily first. “Sweetie, are you okay?” she'd asked, almost touching her but not quite. Emily had nodded, pointing at him. Scully had looked up, and said, “Mulder, you don't have to leave.”

He had felt like he should. He was embarrassed to have stayed on her couch all night, caught in nightmares where she didn't get up, where he had shot her and she was bleeding out and Emily Sim (or Scully, or whatever) had been orphaned yet again.  _ Scully, what are you doing here? She made me come here.  _ He'd probably been whimpering her name in his sleep, for God's sake. “I shouldn't stay here,” he said.

She stepped closer. He heard the echoes from last night again.  _ Scully… She's making me do this. Mulder, make her stop. I can't help myself.  _ He'd thought she'd be safe when she told him she'd be leaving the X Files unit for a while. He had never thought Bowman would go after her.

“You should stay,” she said. The sentence was left hanging, like there was more to it. But it couldn't be  _ I want you to stay _ . He'd almost killed her last night.

“You could have breakfast,” Emily said.

For the first time since San Diego, Mulder really looked at the small girl. She wasn't smiling, but she was studying him intently. He'd talked to her some when he'd visited at the children's home. She laughed a little. Scully had introduced him as “a friend”. For a second, he'd wished she was both of theirs. 

“Breakfast?” he repeated. 

Emily padded over to the cabinet, her socks soundless against the tile, and opened it, removing a bright red box. “Dana got cereal.”

Mulder read the label on the box, and immediately smiled, unable to stop it. “Lucky Charms, Scully? I didn't think you were one for the sugary stuff.”

Scully shrugged sheepishly and half smiles. “It's a treat. A one time thing.” She took the box from Emily and went to another cabinet, assumedly for bowls. “Do you want some cereal, Mulder?”

He'd apologized about a thousand times the night before. She'd insisted on him coming home with her. She couldn't have hated him, and he couldn't say no, because holy shit, she was alive and standing in front of him, and there was the beginning of a smile, and he couldn't leave her, not yet.

She fixed three bowls, and hummed the jingle as he passed. He couldn't stop the smile that followed. Emily smiled shyly up at him as he sat, clutching the spoon clumsily in her small hand. Scully set the bowls down, and sat between them. They spooned up leprechaun cereal in silence.

_ end _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this story, as i was caught in a constant state of unfinishedness, haunted me for like a week. i went through constant periods of hating it and loving it. i finally just decided to post it and get done with it.
> 
> so this was heavily inspired by the first fic i ever finished, which was iwtb in this universe from emily's perspective, except it was highly unrealistic, because i made everything that was canon stay canon except for emily and william. here, i took some liberties to make it more realistic, such as cutting out episodes, scully's decision or fake their deaths (which is what i think would've solved all their problems in s9, but whatever), and moving th events of iwtb to dc. 
> 
> i know william has a small part in this fic, and i love william, i swear, but i wanted to make it different from my william heavy fic, 'half-light'. so i decided to focus on emily and her relationship with mulder, which has always fascinated me. 
> 
> this is such a mess so thanks for sticking it out.


End file.
